TV Theory: Psychopatic Children (How I Met Your Mother)
by Greg Jonson
Summary: In this article I tried to uncover some mysteries that still lie above the canon ending of How I Met Your Mother. Intended as a parody of the Youtube series Film Theory and Game Theory. I mean to show no disrespect to either HIMYM or MatPat's work, I love them both.


Hello, internet, welcome to TV Theory! -the show that doesn't really exist at the moment, but we're doing it anyway.

Today I'd like to cover something that may not even be relevant anymore because A: at the time I'm writing this, the show's finale had aired over 4 and a half years ago; and B: because the majority of the show's fans weren't even satisfied with the conclusive episode to begin with. And when I tell you that it was a sitcom that gained a massive fanbase over the years due to great story writing, single-handedly inventing new memes and pop-culture properties, and, of course, legendary acting -only to drain it all down the sink at the very end to the displeasure of many, it should be obvious that we will be talking about How I Met Your Mother.

First of all, and I know this is going to be a controversial opinion, but I can totally get behind the canon ending. I'm not saying I _liked it,_ but I understand what the writers, Craig Thomas and Carter Bays, intended to say. When I first saw the show finale, I admit -I was pretty upset. And I don't even mean emotionally devastated as would have maybe been appropriate; I was just disappointed that all nine seasons of the show, almost ten years of constant build-ups and consequences, led to a moment when suddenly almost none of that which had been stated before even mattered. It felt like the writers deliberately decided to suddenly scratch everything they've done for the last decade and change their opinions about what should have happened at the very beginning but didn't because -let's be honest: it wouldn't have made for such a good TV show.

Anyway, back in 2014, I was shuffling through the internet trying to find some answers to the questions that I had about HIMYM's ending -yes, I said HIMYM's, it saves everyone a lot of time -and I found some interesting viewpoints that kind of made me reconsider my disappointment. But in order to explain that thoroughly, we're going to have to quickly recap what happened over the course of HIMYM's existence. So from now on, if you haven't watched the show or its parts, beware of massive spoilers.

The sitcom How I Met Your Mother follows the history of a group of friends as told by Ted Mosby, a young and aspiring architect who sat down with his two children in the future to tell them the incredible story of how he met their mother. Roll credits! (...wait, that's a different Youtube channel, my bad.) Over the nine seasons of the show, a number of events had to happen in order for Ted to meet his wife Tracy. In the pilot episode he met Robin, a Canadian TV reporter, and instantly fell in love with her. She initially rejected him, but they remained friends -which meant that Robin was also included in Ted's friend group, consisting of three other people -Marshall Eriksen and Lily Aldrin who spend most of the show being a married couple, and of course Barney Stinson.

From now on, things get a little hectic and crazy, so please just bear with me, all of this is important. In the end of season 1, Ted, being the most stubborn romantic guy in history, finally manages to win over Robin's heart, but the two of them break up anyway a year later. Robin spends the Summer in Argentina trying to survive the breakup and she accidentally met a guy named Gael who she briefly dated. After introducing him to her friends, Ted assumed she was trying to "win" the breakup by showing him that she was doing much better than him, and he has a fun night with the first random attractive girl he could find. This night concluded with him having a butterfly tattoo on his lower back, and he obviously decides to have it removed -which leads him to the office of a certain dermatologist Stella Zinman who becomes his next love interest.

Eventually, Ted proposes to Stella, and it looks like happily ever after. There's just one problem: Stella's ex-boyfriend Tony. Ted invites him to their wedding because he was trying to prove to Stella that exes on weddings aren't necessarily a bad thing as she didn't want Robin to be present. And before you know it, Tony and Stella indeed get back together, leaving Ted heartbroken at the altar. However, Tony feels bad for him and offers to pull some strings for him and get him a job as a teacher of architecture, which Ted eventually accepts. This later on leads him to meet Cindy, a student for whom he almost develops feelings but quickly discovers that her current roommate was basically a perfect match for him. Unbeknownst to Ted at that point, but made known to the viewers, is that said roommate will actually become Mrs Mosby in the future; but the two of them don't actually meet just yet.

Throughout the second half of the show we can see that Ted is more and more stressed about not finding the love of his life yet; even though he does live through a couple of short-lived relationships, none of them have quite the same feel as the ones we've seen before. The main romance focus of the show changes; and surprisingly, this time it's Robin and the aformentioned friend Barney who realise they might have feelings for each other. Since the end of season 3 the tension between them is building up; they circle around each other, spend some time dating but then breaking up because they were, quote, "too awesome for each other", showing interest in one another every once in a while, until in season 8, Barney drops on one knee and proposes. Robin agrees, and the two of them start planning a wedding.

Shortly after the proposal, Ted and Robin have a dispute over whether she and Barney should hire a band for the wedding, or a DJ. Ted finally lets them book a band, but the band pulls back at the last second. And here is where Cindy comes back into play. Ted randomly meets her on a subway and tells her about it. She informs him that a band where her former roommate plays the bass guitar was supposed to play at another wedding just on the same day, but the couple broke up so the band is currently free. Long story short, Ted's future wife's band plays at Robin and Barney's wedding, and that was where Ted met Tracy, the mother of his children. The end.

Now, the creators of the show actually released an alternative ending which pretty much describes what I just summed up for you; but the canon ending is way darker. In the last double-episode, we learn that Barney and Robin's marriage failed as they divorced three years after the events of season 9 -which, by the way, is entirely dedicated to the three days preceding the wedding, so the fact that it didn't work out in the end slaps you in the face even harder. And then, as if this wasn't enough, we learn that Tracy dies in the end to an undisclosed disease, leaving Ted widowed. This would have been kind of ok, I guess, but then, we are told that Ted actually has feelings for Robin again, and the last scene shows them presumably getting back together. Now do you understand what I meant before about dumping everything that led to that point?

In the interviews, the creators said that killing the mother and having Ted reunite with Robin was the plan all along since season one. Other than that, they didn't say much else except that life is just like that. It's full of surprising twists and turns, and some of them might be unpleasant. But in the end, wasn't this just the point that the show was trying to make the entire time? Throughout the nine seasons, we had so many surprising moments and so many consequential events piling up on one another that we felt like we couldn't have gotten further away from the beginning. If anything, having all of these last couple of plot twists thrown in our faces like that instead of dedicating another ten years to describe everything that happened, it felt more shocking and the fans lacked a proper explanation.

Furthermore, one person -who shall remain anonymous because I couldn't find the source again -pointed out that we're all forgetting that the entire show isn't happening in real time. It's the future Ted Mosby's story coming to life in front of our eyes; but this whole time, it's actually been just about him talking to his children, not only to tell them about what his wife and their mother had meant to him, but also to awkwardly ask if it was ok for him to date another woman. And that is an explanation that I can get behind. Having read that one comment somewhere in the depths of the internet, it's now easy for me to think that most of the show's viewers simply missed the point, and it all makes perfect sense like that.

But wait! Maybe, just maybe, there is another layer of untold story that we're not meant to know about. Maybe the reality is even more sinister than we were meant to believe; and if that's the case, having all the fans deliberately focus on the, quote-unqote, "bad ending" and its delivery, was only meant to distract us from digging too deep into it and possibly uncovering something we would have regretted. And it all comes down to a simple question: How did Tracy Mosby (née McConnel) actually die?

The show itself gives us virtually no clues about it. Tracy is seen healthy and completely alive whenever she appears on screen, with just two exceptions: one when she's lying on a hospital bed without any visible symptoms that would give us a clue; and two when she's having a massive headache after drinking too much on the previous night. One connection we _could_ make here, even though it's maybe kind of a stretch, is that Tracy could be experiencing kidney malfunctioning.

Kidneys are an organ in our bodies that is supposed to control, to quote from Wikipedia: "...the volume of various body fluid compartments, fluid osmolality, acid-base balance, various electrolyte concentrations, and removal of toxins." This virtually means that the fluids we intake pass through the kidneys, the good stuff gets redistributed accordingly, and the trash, so to speak, gets turned into urine. Mind you, the "good stuff" in this scenario also inludes alcohol. Kidneys should ideally take care of proper alcohol redistribution. But when you have malfunctioning kidneys, the alcohol redistribution obviously might not work as it should, and alcohol overdose can cause more trouble to you compared to someone whose kidneys are healthy. In the most severe instances, drinking alcohol with bad kidneys may even cause death.

So the question is this: could there be something more to that one brief moment of Tracy's hangover? All we have in fact seen her drink on screen was one glass of champagne. If that is all that she had drunk, and if her body can't deal with that small amount of alcohol, I think it might point towards kidney malfunction. It would also match with the hospital scene: kidney malfunction may not cause any symptoms that would be visible on the first look.

Also, in the episode Vesuvius, Tracy and Ted sit at a table with what appears to be more glasses of champagne; and this is set in the year 2024 which is also the year when we know for a fact that Tracy dies. We could conclude that she had overdosed on alcohol so badly that evening that she had to be brought to hospital where her kidneys just gave up and she passed away shortly afterwards, possibly unable to find a matching kidney donor in time. But it's ever so subtly implied in that same episode that the couple may be already aware of Tracy's undisclosed illness, and that would mean that she chose to drink alcohol one last time, either because it didn't matter to her at that point, or even to speed up the process of dying.

If we were to embrace this theory, we should also ask this question: Was Tracy born with malfunctioning kidneys, or were her kidney damaged at some point in her life? Well, folks, sit back, because I'm about to tell you HIMYM's darkest secret right now. In my opinion, Tracy's kidneys have been damaged on purpose; in other words, she had been murdered. And who murdered her, you ask? I think... it was her own children, Penny and Luke.

I know, I know. I can hear you yelling right now: "Her own children? That's impossible! What could ever justify something like this?" Okay, just hear me out, will you? I promise it's all going to make sense when I'm finished.

First of all, in the 200th episode called How Your Mother Met Me, Tracy is seen in a bar celebrating her 21st birthday clearly drinking beer. Perhaps this was her first time drinking alcohol in her life, but I can't stop thinking that if she had been _born_ with bad kidneys, it would have shown way earlier in her life, and the doctors would strictly advice her not to _ever_ drink any alcohol. This means that by the time she was 21 years old, Tracy's kidneys were still fully operational. But if we fast forward to the New Year's Eve of 2022, that's when we see her body having a hard time coping with alcohol overdose. This happens mere two years before her death, and apparently neither she or Ted know about her condition just yet. Therefore, she had to be diagnosed in the year 2022 or possibly 2023.

Okay, but that still doesn't answer what the kids have to do with anything, does it? I've got you covered. You see, I have always found one thing that Penny said to her father very strange. She said: "Come on, dad. Mom's been gone for six years now. It's time." And she said that in the context of Ted moving on and asking out Robin. In the way she said it, Penny doesn't seem to be showing a lot of affection towards her diceased mother; she just casually mentions it as if it were a minor inconvenience, while her brother nods approvingly -which might mean he would have been in agreement with his sister's plan even if he didn't participate in it himself. This at least shows that the two siblings didn't think too highly of their mother, or at least that they think way higher of "aunt Robin."

Speaking of Robin, it is not out of question that she might have been the reason why Penny and Luke decided to dispose of their mother. The first encounter of Robin and Penny occurred in 2020 -mind you, two years before we saw Tracy showing the symptoms. The girl immediately took a liking in Robin, and she saw the chemistry that was going on between her and Ted.

And here's the thing about the children's background: They have a father who's a famous New York-based architect and who supposedly provides the family with all the money and comfort they can conceive. Have you even seen the Mosby residence? That's a rich household if I've ever seen one. So it is safe to assume that Penny and Luke are being spoiled by their rich and famous dad. Now on the other side, there is Tracy. Tracy set out way earlier in her life on a journey to end poverty, and we know that she's written one book about the subject. That's it. We don't know what she does for a living and if she can match Ted in terms of being a cool role model to her children.

Robin, on the other hand, is a world-famous TV reporter, supposedly much more similar to Ted in terms of wealth and influence. Wouldn't it make more sense in the young kid's head to want Robin as a mother? My suspicion is that Penny decided to remove her own mom out of the picture, knowing Ted wouldn't leave her as long as she lived, and then get him and Robin together so that both of her parents would be equally awesome.

To back up this theory, we can observe a couple of things when old Ted interacts with his kids. Luke has mentioned that Robin frequently comes into their home for dinner; and both children are stoked about the fact that their father has the hots for her, pushing him to ask her out already. Also, since the show's beginning, the kids have been showing signs of impatience as if they already knew what Ted was going to conclude with, they just had to sit there through his never ending story until he finally said what they wanted to hear.

Maybe it's all been part of their plan all along. After Tracy died, the kids began to give Ted subliminal messages about starting to invite Robin to their home in order for them to grow closer together again after Robin spent a huge part of her career traveling around the world and disconnecting from everyone in New York. You can clearly see that Ted made the story that he told to his kids really more about Robin than Tracy; this might mean that he's already been manipulated into developing a new crush on Robin, so Penny and Luke's plan obviously worked. And by the time it finally happened, the children were in their teenage years and presumably had more brians than when they were smaller, but since the deed was already done, they decided to stick to the original plan, hoping nobody would ever find out about what they did.

Alright guys; we have the convicts, we have the motive, all that's left is a murder weapon. There are a couple of ways the children could have gone about it, but the most probable one to me -is mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning, while not necessarily showing visible symptoms except rash, does damage the kidneys. I don't know if young Penny and young Luke could have known about what exactly was going to happen if they started to secretly feed their mother mercury, but they must have known it wasn't good news for her. It was just incredibly lucky for them that she didn't show any accute symptoms right on the spot because then the authorities probably would have quickly discovered what happened. The kids just kept the dosage small enough to damage Tracy's kidneys slowly, but steadily.

We can even guess where exactly did the little psychopaths get to the mercury. The house that Ted bought and renovated was old and almost fallen apart. In old uninhabited houses, you might be able to find old junk that nobody uses anymore; old junk such as old thermometers that used to have mercury inside them. It is likely that Ted never got around to cleaning the old house's attic; maybe he was just lazy or maybe his quirky affection for weird vintage stuff got the better of him. Either way, perhaps the previous house owner had a bunch of old mercury-filled thermometers stored in the attic, and Ted and Tracy's children found them. All that was then left to do was figure out how to get the mercury out and disposing it to Tracy in such way that the adults wouldn't notice.

So in conclusion: probably somewhere in 2020, shortly after Penny met Robin, the two siblings started to systematically poison their mother. She soon became to show symptoms of severe kidney malfunctioning and passed away due to kidney failure in 2024. Then it took six years of careful manipulation, but the kids finally got what they wanted: Robin became a part of their family, and they could brag about having two rich and famous parents.

But hey, that's just a theory -a TV theory! Aaaaaaaaaand cut!


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